Africom: How Africa contrived to get everything wrong

The announcement of the opening of the Office of Security Cooperation in Lusaka on April 25 caused an uproar in Zambia. The announcement almost immediately rekindled debate about the presence of the United States Africa Command (Africom) in Africa. The Zambian government was forced to explain itself to its people.

It is not uncommon for nations to have security cooperation. So, the fact that the Americans have such offices in 38 nations in Africa should not surprise anyone. But the way people reacted to what they mistook to be an announcement of the establishment of Africom’s HQ in Zambia rang a distant bell – how Africa opposed Africom when it was established.

It was a colossal miscalculation.

The formation of Africom in 2007 was an acknowledgement of Africa’s increasing strategic importance to the world. Prior to Africom, the US State Department’s official position on Africa was that Africa had very little strategic importance. It was absurd because it was only a decade earlier the US made dozens of military interventions in Africa.

Africom was conceived to address that strategic incoherence. Militarily, it unified operations which were previously under three different commands. Strategically, it brought together disparate military and civilian agencies such as USAID, Peace Corps and US Diplomatic Missions under one umbrella. This was designed to achieve America’s interests in Africa through strategies such as conflict prevention, poverty alleviation, capacity development and, of course, military intervention.

But Africans were not amused. It was only when Africom’s first commander, General William Ward, went around Africa to drum up support for Africom did the Americans realise the depth of opposition that Africans had against Africom.

When Gen Ward arrived in South Africa, then under President Thabo Mbeki, and asked for a meeting with the Minister of Defence, Mosiuoa Lekota, the minister refused to see him. The South Africans went further. Tey mobilised Africa’s resistance against the very thing Gen Ward was in South Africa to promote.

In a rare show of unity, the whole of Africa – with the exception of Liberia and Botswana – stood united against the establishment of an Africom HQ on African soil. After a tour of the Maghreb, a US State Department official remarked that, “We’ve got a big image problem down there. Public opinion is really against getting into bed with the US. They just don’t trust the US.”

She could not be more correct. Given the many sins which the US had not atoned for in Africa, Africans were justified in being suspicious of the Americans’ intentions.

In August 2007, when the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs invited Dr Wafula Okumu to provide an African perspective to the situation, he explained Africans’ love-hate relationship with America. He highlighted, for example, how “the US did not support the UN decolonisation initiatives and anti-colonial and anti-apartheid liberation movements”.

As a result, Africa believed that, one, Africom was going to militarise Africa, two, it was going to entrench dictatorial regimes that protect US interests, three, it was going to lead to Africa’s encirclement for its resources, and, four, it was going to increase the risk of attack from America’s enemies.

Seeing this opposition, Africom’s HQ was kept in Stuttgart, Germany, where it was temporarily hosted. Bereft of the continental operational base, the Americans adopted a distributed strategy which, in retrospect, exposed Africa’s naivety in its approach to this matter.

In October 2018, a team of US commandos in Niger were on the way to provide reinforcement to another team that was engaging Jihadists there. Along the way, this team was ambushed and four soldiers were killed. The enquiries that followed revealed the extent of US military activities in Africa.

It was revealed that the Americans are now most active militarily in Africa than in any other region in the world. The US has 34 known military outposts which conduct about ten engagements and exercises every single day, more than any other place in the world.

Other reports showed that there are 13 countries with known presence in Africa, including China, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. Many of them are concentrated in the Horn of Africa, with Djibouti alone hosting military bases for eight separate nations, with Russia and India to join the club soon. Africa is also home to quasi-state militaries such as Russia’s Wagner, currently operating in Mali, CAR and Sudan.

So much for Africa’s opposition to militarisation.

Immediately after Africa’s rejection of Africom, when the Arab Spring became a winter, and when the fight against ISIS displaced Jihadists to Africa, the continent was plunged into more military conflicts which Africa didn’t have the wherewithal of ending.

Africa isn’t new to wars. It has had over 100 conflicts in 35 nations since 1990. Today, at least 16 nations still face military conflicts. Failure to stabilise Africa has led to the continued plunder with impunity of Africa’s resources in places such as the DRC and Libya.

So, not only did Africa fail to stop militarisation, it also failed to achieve any of the other objectives too. Given that Africa and the US had overlapping interests in many areas, Africom should have been allowed to take the lead from the beginning. Sadly, pragmatism has never been Africa’s strength, has it?

But reality cannot be escaped forever. In April 2021, President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, in a dramatic reversal to Nigeria’s position, called on the Americans to relocate Africom’s HQ to Africa “to deal with insecurity in West Africa”. It didn’t have to take 14 years to come to that conclusion.

Next week I will review how an alternative approach could have led to remarkably different outcomes.